Japanese phones will soon get alerts for inbound missiles and other attacks

Motorola patents parasitic cellphone to text battery alerts

While those lusting for love may be enthralled about Motorola's newfound method of extended your chances on ProxiDate, the researchers behind the parasitic cellphone patent probably had more critical scenarios in mind. In cases where your battery life is running flat, situational demands may leave you wondering how you're going to contact your laundry list of emergency contacts with such little juice. The patent spells out an automatic shutdown feature that disables all non-essential functions (including accepting incoming calls), which allows the Bluetooth transceiver to search for "compatible proxy phones" nearby. The sputtering device can then use the proxy cellphone to "send a warning text message to everyone on your pre-arranged emergency list," alerting them of your predicament and that you can only receive SMS messages (for a limited time). Of course, this brilliant plan will only work if indifferent strangers leave their mobiles open for Bluetooth syncs (not likely), and then don't mind you racking up their monthly bill with costly text messages (even less likely).